David Hoyle
Conservationist who championed the world’s forests and worked for their sustainable management
DAVID HOYLE, who has died in an accident aged 48, devoted his life to protecting African forests and the indigenous people who depend on them, latterly as the World Wide Fund for Nature’s conservation director in Cameroon, then as conservation and land use director of Proforest, a non-profit group that works for sustainable agriculture and forestry in developing countries.
David John Hoyle was born on March 13 1969 and educated at Lancing College, where his passion for Africa was ignited by a geography field trip to Malawi. He taught in Zimbabwe before reading Human Geography at Reading University. After graduation he worked as a VSO volunteer in Mpika, Zambia, helping local communities to improve their lives using local materials and easily learnt techniques, including the introduction of energy efficient clay ovens.
After taking a degree at Edinburgh University and a series of postings in Scotland, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, he joined the WWF, promoting the social aspects of conservation in Zaire, Kenya and Tanzania.
In 1999, Hoyle moved to Nguti, a densely forested region of Cameroon, with the Wildlife Conservation Society, managing community-based projects around the Cameroon-nigeria border and founding the NGO Nature Cameroon to sustain efforts after the WCS project closed.
Returning to Britain in 2004, Hoyle managed WWF’S Eastern African Ecoregion programme in Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique. He also worked on the “Good Woods” initiative, an alliance of woodcarvers, traders, community development and conservation groups in Kenya to optimise sustainable management of hardwoods for musical instruments and woodcarving.
In 2007 he returned to Africa, first to Dar es Salaam, where he collaborated with Dr Amani Ngusaru to establish the Coastal East Africa Initiative, one of the most effective of WWF’S 12 global priority programmes. They worked to improve tuna fisheries and forest trade and Hoyle produced videos showing the devastating effects of climate change in the region. In 2010 he returned to Cameroon where, as WWF’S conservation director for two years, he supported anti-poaching law enforcement and protected area management across the country.
He campaigned to protect Cameroon’s forests from the threats of mining, deforestation and agriindustrial developments, spearheading one of the Congo basin’s first “REDD+” projects to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. He also worked to secure the one million-hectare Ngoyla Mintom forest massif from logging and land use change, a long-term initiative that is gradually gaining ground, and helped Phil Agland make a documentary for the BBC about the plight of the Baka pygmies.
For the last four years Hoyle worked with Proforest, Oxford, where, travelling widely, he pursued an international consensus on the challenges posed by the expansion of agriculture and forestry in tropical developing countries. In Gabon, he worked on a project to establish over 50,000 hectares of sustainably managed palm plantations. He also headed the Africa Palm Oil Initiative, which culminated in seven African Governments signing a declaration for the sustainable development of the oil palm sector in November 2016.
In 2002 he had married Marceline, whom he had met when, as a young graduate from Nguti, she had joined his team. He was devoted to her and their three children and put many promising students from the Nguti community through school and university. He was involved in many charities, including supporting an orphanage in Dar es Salaam.
With tragic irony, David Hoyle lost his life when a cherry tree fell on to his car as he was driving just five minutes from his home in Hampshire, killing him instantly.
His wife and children survive him.
David Hoyle, born March 13 1969, died June 6 2017